OK, had a chance to think about the Delta/US Airways slot swap some more. In some ways, it’s pretty much what we saw before. That is to the say, one of the final steps in US Airways integration of America West, to the creation of an airline with four points of strength — Charlotte, Philadelphia, Phoenix, Washington Reagan National — instead of the eight that the two airlines had when they merged in 2005.

So what does US Airways do with 42 extra slots at Reagan National (DCA)? Well, the verbiage now is much like the verbiage when the deal was first proposed nearly two years ago:

US Airways plans to add at least 15 new destinations from Washington, to its network as a result of the transaction and competition will be further enhanced by US Airways adding service to popular destinations that are currently served by other carriers.

In 2009, the airline listed 15 places it would add service to/from DCA: Seven destination served at the time by other carriers (Cincinnati, Ohio; Des Moines, Iowa; Grand Rapids, Mich.; Madison, Wis.; Montreal, Canada; Miami, Fla.; and Ottawa, Canada), as well as eight cities that had no daily nonstop service to/from DCA at the time (Birmingham, Ala.; Islip, N.Y.; Ithaca, N.Y.; Little Rock, Ark.; Myrtle Beach, S.C.; Pensacola, Fla.; Savannah, Ga.; and Tallahassee, Fla.).

In exchange, for the DCA slots, Delta is now getting 132 slots — it was 125 in the original 2009 deal — at LaGuardia (LGA), reducing US Airways’ LGA operation to just the Northeast Shuttle (DCA and Boston), plus Charlotte, Philadelphia, and Pittsburgh.

Domestically, the issues created are the same as in 2009:

• US Airways had used LGA as one of its connecting point for people going to/from secondary destinations in New York state and New England. Thus passenger flows will have to go over its other hubs, mainly PHL and DCA but also to a degree here at CLT. Will we see more nonstops from CLT to such secondary destinations as a result?

• Note Des Moines (DSM), Madison (MSN) and Grand Rapids (GRR) on the list of places US Airways said they want to serve from DCA. Delta offers a single daily regional jet flight to each of these places from DCA. US Airways doesn’t currently serve MSN or GRR at all and DSM has US Airways service only to Phoenix.

Doubt you’d want to offer just a single flight a day to a city. As we’ve noted before, US Airways has been pretty unwilling to add service to second-tier Midwest destinations. Does this change now, and they add service from DSM, MSN, and GRR to Charlotte and/or Philly as part of this? Os is the previous announcement of service to those cities just something to help get the feds to sign off on the deal with US Airways having no intention to serve those markets?

• There’s also an aircraft size issue. LGA service is a bunch of 50-seat regional gets and 37-seat turboprops. DCA would be gaining larger aircraft that that and that goes even beyond the 42 slot pair gain. That larger jet capacity has to come out of somewhere, and that answer has to be in part CLT. Presumably, we’d gain a lot of 50-seaters and 37-seaters here to make up for that — unless US Airways’ wholly-owned commuter divisions were going to get downsized as a result of this.

Then there’s the international side of the transaction. In the original deal, US Airways would also gain slots in Tokyo and Sao Paulo. Japan is now Open Skies so the Tokyo part is now pointless. The latest press release contains this bizarro statement though:

US Airways also will acquire from Delta in 2015 the rights to operate additional daily service at one of world’s most important business destinations – Sao Paulo, Brazil. As US Airways continues its strategic expansion into South America, the additional rights would allow it to operate two daily flights to Sao Paulo and continue its existing daily service to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

It sound like US Airways is getting something of value here. But open closer examination, no, not really. Brazil goes Open Skies in October 2015 anyway and even before that there are 14 additional weekly flights to Sao Paulo available in each of October 2013 and October 2014, so if US Airways wanted to add a second daily flight to Sao Paulo in 2015 — or even late 2013 or 2014 — they could very probably do it anyways.

Best guess is that this may involve some sort of slot guarantee for US Airways’ planned first flight to Sao Paulo, which would use leased slots from United. The lease is up in spring 2015, so there could be a gap, and this may be some sort of insurance policy in case United doesn’t extend the deal for the last six months of the slot-restrictions.

Bonus observation: Speaking of US Airways and Sao Paulo, isn’t it about time for the airline to announce its first Sao Paulo flight, which is suppose to begin in November or so? Or can’t they get landing and takeoff times in Brazil to make it viable?